"Poultry
in motion!"
In this claymation parody of "The Great
Escape", a repressed clutch of chickens
lead by the feisty Ginger, attempt to break
out of their prison camp farm, but
their efforts are consistently thwarted by
the farm owners - a beanpole witch
called Mrs Tweedy and her lummock of a husband,
Mr Tweedy. The arrival of a
cocky American rooster, Rocky, spurs
the hens to even greater heights of
ingenuity. With his help they might just
learn how to use their own feather
power and fly the coop. But they'll need
to get a move on, because the
Tweedys have cooked up a deadly scheme to
get rich quick, and they've
taken delivery of a monstrous pie machine...

The first feature-length production
from Aardman, and the first in what was then
a five-picture deal with DreamWorks,
"Chicken Run" scooped over $100m at the
US Box Office.

"Chicken Run" is based in
the same nonspecific North-England realm as
"Wallace & Gromit". Whereas
the former creation harks back to an earlier era,
"Chicken Run" is actually based
within that end-of-war period and it plays upon
the clichés of that time and in particular,
the movies created in that timeframe
with a hearty spoonful of modern references
for today's filmgoers too. Beyond
the obvious references to "The
Great Escape", one should be able to spy nods
to "Stalag 17", "Whistle Down
the Wind", "Star Trek", "Indiana Jones",
"The Blues
Brothers" and many more.

The attention to detail is almost microscopic.
Nick and Fetcher, the scavenging
rats on the farm nibble Jammy Dodgers and
Custard Creams. Bunty wears a
pair of knitted woolen flying goggles - evidently
a gift from wool-mad Babs - when
she makes her big attempt to fly. Fowler
the ballyhoo rooster has RAF
memorabilia and Boy's Own material pasted
round his coop. There are too
many favourites to list, really. These qualities
are echoed in many of the tie-in
goodies and licensed products produced
by licensees who bought
into the
movie. Toonhound's mini site Bunty's
Booty profiles the best of these to
get collectors salivating....

"Chicken Run" opened in the
USA, on June 23rd 2000, and had a first
weekend take of $17.5m. The film eventually
took a shade under $225m
around the globe.

»
The crew totaled 180, with up to 28 units filming at once. Even then,
shooting was
completed just a few short weeks prior to the film's release.

» 300
full-size chicken models were made for the shoot, and 140 smaller
ones for the
crowd scenes.

» Those
chickens cost £1000 each to produce, and they were exquisitely
detailed. The Bunty
figure featured 3,077 feathers!